


talking to your hearts

by alliariondak (Sprytemark)



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, sentient heart weapons, the four people that make big swords out of their hearts and what their smaller swords say to them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sprytemark/pseuds/alliariondak
Summary: Keyblades speak.Not literally, but they come from your heart. They’re you — why wouldn’t they have things to say? Names, magic, directives. They’re alive, sort of kind of.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73





	talking to your hearts

**Author's Note:**

> started writing this. Blacked out. Bon appetit

Keyblades speak. 

Not in the  _ traditional _ sense, necessarily, but they communicate, often in words, usually in impressions. Keyblades forged from the heart are talkative — it’s your heart, a piece of it, it’s only natural that it would have things to say. Those forged from light or darkness are possibly quieter, but feel… louder. 

Sora hears the Kingdom Key tell him its name in reverberations through his heart and nerves and marrow, gentle and warm and powerful like a sleeping lion. It’s a gentle, deep-set thing, nestling itself in the center of his heart when he dismisses it. It hums in anticipation when he waits to call it, it purrs the names of spells and the ways to pull his magic through it in his head, it… apologizes, when Riku takes it. When he gets it back, it sings, and tells him stories of where its been and how the heart felt where it was in an instant, like the sweet coating on a pill, back into his heart, a layer of difference. A drum-beat cello-hum song that stays, it learned something new. 

The key hums the nicknames it gets from keychains with something like amusement, Diamond Dust and Rumbling Rose and Classic Tone and other such funny things. Sora isn’t sure if it’s making those up, or the keychains have names, or what. But it’s always exciting to learn a new name, make half a new friend. 

Riku’s keyblade bites him, at first. Not literally, nothing here is literal. But it’s forged from his heart, and his heart bites. It tells him what he tells himself, and at first, he doesn’t  _ like  _ it. He wants the warm hum of his (Sora’s) weapon back. 

But then it softens, and though it growls and hisses like Soul Eater did, it hums  _ Way to Dawn _ , and Riku feels it curl in his heart possessively and warmly like a cat. He learns to hear it speak to him, and he learns to speak back, and he makes… friends, with his heart. It’s a rebellious thing, still, aware of what he wants but also aware of what he needs, and though it’s a weapon in his hands, it’s not afraid to protest when he does something phenomenally stupid. He has to ignore it, sometimes, at… at the beginning. They’re both desperate. But he gets better at listening to it.

It breaks its form like it breaks chains, flees back into his heart like it were a cocoon. Riku calls it forward again, listening to its new voice, its old cadence.  _ Braveheart,  _ it whispers to him,  _ to him _ , and burns like love. 

… 

Their keyblade, together, the one made from  _ something _ but the one that’s theirs and their two hearts and their hands — it’s  _ beautiful.  _

It’s an orchestra in motion, a melody, a harmony, the swell and flow of standing in the midst of a sea of instruments, it’s light and life and love and it’s precise and glittering and responsive and wonderful. It sings, it wants to know what they want, it will leap to their aid in an instant, loyal and happy. It has no words and it doesn’t need them, hearts in tune speaking through it and for it. It feels like light to wield. It feels like their friends. It crows in triumph when it sees the opportunity to free Aqua, it pulls them all back into the light from the darkness. It’s there, in their hearts, separate from the Kingdom Key and separate from Braveheart. Humming happily when they’re together. Content to rest, until they call to it. 

Ventus’ keyblade laughed its name in his head, like it thought him forgetting it was very silly.  _ Wayward Wind, _ it says, fondly, like a name for the both of them, in bells and reeds. It doesn’t hum in his heart so much as it dances around it, restless and bouncy and longing to be out and about and free and he feels a little bad denying it. 

It’ll chatter to him sometimes, like he does to his friends. It wants to do tricks, it wants to fly, it just  _ wants _ , is the thing.  _ Let’s go up there! _ it whistles, in non-words, or  _ oh, hello! _ — alive, more than the dead metal it looks like it’s designed after. Ventus can’t help but smile at its soft nudges in his heart. 

It praises him for doing things right, in a gentle way that feels a lot like how Terra or Aqua does it. Like a patient mentor. Ventus thinks that’s odd, because it’s not much older than he is, really, and he doesn’t remember learning this stuff before. He doesn’t mind it. It weighs nothing inside him, and instead flutters like a butterfly, curious and young and feeling relief, almost, at how gosh darn new and interesting things are. 

(It calls itself Lost Memory and it feels like age, like taking off a mask. It’s not sad. It’s just stripped bare.)

Vanitas hates his keyblade. It hates him back. He is not… he was not, he is not a heavy hitter, but he supposes he will be. Void Gear is angry, and heavy, and it burns with that molten metal hatred, keeping his heart alight and warm and jagged and when he calls it out his heart goes cold. It’s a clunky thing. It hurts to swing, like everything does, like his heart does anyways. It doesn’t talk to him. Occasionally, it’ll… rumble, at him, tell him things like  **Void Gear** and  **No.** and  **Is that all.** Short things.  **You remember this.** Shut up. 

It doesn’t feel, completely, like his, is the thing. It must be, but it doesn’t feel like it. The eyes on it burn, too, and he gets the feeling they make its voice different than it would be without them, more like throwing a piano than clicking nails on it rhythmically. Sometimes it comforts him in ways that are much too deep to voice. Sometimes it snaps, but sometimes it feels like security, like reassurance. 

(He tries to ask it its old name, once. It knows, but it won’t tell him.)

… 

Their keyblade. The one that isn’t theirs, and is more like  _ them,  _ like a wild dog they’ve wrangled and chained themselves to and tangled with, the fragments of their hearts they lost welded together into an awkward shape. This one screams. 

It’s loud. It’s protective, which is a surprise, it’s a guardian, but the way it thinks, it thinks in words, and it thinks in the way that it means to prevent harm by  _ doing _ it. 

**_Destroy it,_ ** it howls,  _ everything _ **_, until nothing remains,_ ** _ until the canvas is empty,  _ **_until we have nothing left,_ ** _ until we take ourselves with it.  _

**_Kill the usurper. Burn at its feet. Release us at once._ **

In Vanitas’ hands, it burns more than Void Gear ever did. In Ventus’ heart, it longs to put an end to everything, an exhausted fury. In their hands, in  _ their _ hands it is fast and messy and loud and though it is counterpart to what might be a god it really is quite an opposite. Anger that it was called for. Hatred for the hands that hold it. Energy that  _ will _ be released. A thing that has its own plans. 

Which honestly makes it very easy for Ventus to follow its will. It’s destructive, and it’s part of his heart. So he lets it. 

It seethes. Wayward Wind giggles at its anger, he feels Void Gear release its tension. 

Shattering both, they realize, isn’t awful. It’s funny, it feels more like a  _ yeeeup, see ya later!  _ and  **well done.**

**…**

Sora holds the χ-blade. 

It doesn’t scream at him. It hisses, to him, its name, as he holds it. The name is not  _ χ-blade. _ The name is not a name one can say. The piece of his and Riku’s keyblade, in a rare moment of disharmony, doesn’t like that he’s holding it. 

“Very well done,” he is told. 

**_Master._ ** he is told, reluctantly, cowed, like a legion of terrifying monstrous things recognizing something more powerful than they are.

Sora shudders. 


End file.
